HILL AIR FORCE BASE — Normally at Hill Air Force Base, the word “raptor” is associated with the F-22s that fly into the installation for maintenance and repair — but a program on base is now focusing on birds of a more traditional variety.

Kendahl Johnson, operations chief with Hill’s 75th Air Base Wing Public Affairs office, said wildlife managers at Hill are working overtime to preserve the lives of predatory raptors through the base’s Raptor Relocation initiative. Part of the base’s Bird Aircraft Strike Hazard program, Johnson said the aim of the effort is simple: help save native wildlife populations around the base while simultaneously minimizing costly and often dangerous bird strikes to aircraft flying in and out of Hill’s airfield.

Johnson said the program involves trapping kestrels, hawks, owls and other raptors, then relocating the birds to safer, more suitable habitats away from the airfield.

Ryan Carter, U.S. Department of Agriculture wildlife technician and former Air Force aircraft mechanic, has worked with the program for nearly a decade and can personally attest to the import of preventing bird strikes.

“I understand the damage birds can do to aircraft,” Carter said. “This is a really important program in keeping the aircraft and those in them safe.”

Johnson said that since 1995, Air Force planes have sustained more than 100,000 bird strikes and, as a result, the agency has lost 13 aircraft and suffered 29 deaths. Johnson said birds strikes to Air Force assets over the past quarter-century have cost a whopping $714.4 million.

But Tyler Adams, a USDA biologist, said Hill’s relocation program is about much more than the Air Force’s bottom line.

“There is a near zero percent chance a bird is going to survive a strike with an aircraft,” Adams said. “No one wins when a bird collides with an aircraft. Removing them is a win for everyone. It protects Air Force assets and keeps missions running, while also protecting the birds.”

Adams said the birds relocated are important to the regional ecosystem. He said birds are captured in traps designed to enclose them and prevent them from flying away, but without harming them. He said traps are checked regularly and when a bird is caught, it’s then photographed and tagged, then taken to a more suitable environment typically at least 50 miles from Hill’s flight line. Oftentimes, the relocation process involves putting a range of mountains between the base and wherever the drop-off site is located.

Johnson said those efforts have been rewarded because, to date, no relocated bird has been documented to have returned to Hill’s airfield.

Since April 2015, the outfit has captured and released 269 birds of prey, including 229 kestrels, 15 Cooper’s hawks, 13 red-tailed hawks, five Swainson’s hawks and seven great horned owls.